Newspaper Page Text
THE AGE OF RENEWAL
THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 1966 GEORGIA BULLETIN PAGE 5
OLD AND NEW
Sound Theology, Appeal In New Hymnals
By Religious News Service
Virtually without exception, music has
always played a serious part in religious
rituals, and this music for the most part
is sung music. It was easy to understand,
therefore, the excitement created among
hymnologists last year by the discovery
of an ancient Coptic prayer book contain
ing a hymn, which scholars claimed might
have been recited by Christ Himself
shortly before His Crucifixion.
The discovery was made by archeo
logists gleaning an area soon to be in
undated by the waters of the United Arab
Republic's Aswan Dam. The book, dating
back perhaps to the second century, was
found in a Cell of a monastery believed
to have been built originally in the eighth
or ninth century and rebuilt 200 years
later. >
Less dramatic, but highly significant and
important, is the current movement in
both Protestantism and Roman Catholi
cism not only to make the churches truly
singing churches, but to encourage the
use of hymns that are at once theolo
gically sound and contemporary in ex
pression.
The need for new hymns has been un
derscored by Father Clement J. Mc-
Naspy, S.J., a member of the board of
directors of the North American Litur
gical Association, who told the National
Catholic Music Educators Association:
"The greatest need today is to produce
hymns which can become vital and mean
ingful to the people.”
Historic challenges and opportunities
in the field of religious music have been
opened up in the church by the change
to the vernacular in the Mass and con
gregational singing.
However, Father McNaspy, who is also
an associate editor of America, national
Catholic weekly and author of "Our Chang
ing Liturgy" published last, year, warn
ed that "the recurrence of the verna
cular brings new problems.”
"We were,” he said, "safe as long as
we could hide behind Latin, but now our
English must make more sense.” He noted
that this year the Liturgical Conference
had published "The Book of Catholic Wor
ship" containing selected hymns, and that
other books of hymns had also been pub
lished or were shortly to be published
by various Catholic firms. One of the
forthcoming publications, he noted, would
be a book on folk lore hymns sponsored
by the Friends of the English Liturgy,
a Chicago group.
Two years ago, the Gregorian Institute
of America, housed at the Mary Manse
College in Toledo, Ohio, made history by
publishing a hymnal on Christian unity
which was believed to be the first of its
kind.
The book contained 100 hymns select
ed to promote musical bonds among Pro
testants, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox.
Said the editors (Dr. Clifford Bennett,
president of the Gregorian Institute, and
Paul Hume, chairman of the department
of music at Georgetown University and
music critic of the Washington Post):
"We stand on the threshold of an excit
ing challenging new era of dialogue be
tween diverse faiths, and is there any
greater bond of Christian unity than the
sharing of our musical heritage and trea
sures?”
Included in the volume were hymns
from the Jewish heritage, tunes and texts
of the Byzantine Rite, adaptations of the
Gregorian chant, Negro spirituals, and
works of Bach, Charles Wesley, Isaac
Watt, Tallis, Xavier and Vaughan
Williams.
The sharing of hymns by the different
Churches has long been hailed as one
of the factors helping to keep alive the
new ecumenical spirit among them.
A single example of ecumenical co
operation was recorded in Milwaukee more
than a year and a half ago when a Roman
Catholic pastor turned to a Lutheran con
gregation for help in coaching his parish
in the singing of hymns.
At the bidding of Father A.A. Wissink,
pastor of Holy Ghost church, the Rev.
Hoover T. Grimsby, pastor of Ascension
church, an American Lutheran congrega
tion, brought over his choir to sing to
gether with the Catholic parishioners.
This was followed shortly afterwards by
a joint hymn-sing by Catholics and Lu
therans at the Lake Park Lutheran church,
a Lutheran Church in American congre
gation. Among the hymns sung were some
which, it was explained, were equally
appropriate for Catholics and Lutherans.
One of them was Martin Luther's Refor
mation hymn, "A Mighty Fortress is Our
God."
ARNOLD HEWING
She’s A Killer
By James Arnold
"Modesty Blaise” marks the femini
zation of the James Bond type, and perhaps
the beginning of the end of a tedious
cycle. There re
main many possible
variations in the
character of the spy
hero (children, old
people, dogs), but
few that allow for
the full sex ex
ploitation essential
to the spirit of
these stories.
Arnold
The most fruitful possibility appears to
lie in second generation films ('The
YOIJR WORLD AND M1NF
Who Will Represent The Poor?
By Gary MacEoin
I happened to be in Quebec when the
news came through that its archbishop,
Maurice Cardinal Roy, had been entrusted
with an important new job. Pope Paul
had named him to head a committee
charged with implementing two major de
cisions of the Council.
Its first task is to recommend theforms
and functions of a central secretariat for
the lay apostolate and councils for
clerical-lay cooperation at the interna
tional, national, interdiocesan, diocesan,
interparochial and parochial levels (Ar
ticle 26 of the de
cree on the Apos
tolate of the Laity).
Its second is to re
commend theforms
and functions of the
agency to promote
justice for the poor
of the world, and
to work with other
MacEoin
Christians to create conditions that will
bring peace to the world (Article 90 of
the constitution on the Church in the Mo
dern World).
The choice of Cardinal Roy was hailed
enthusiastically not only by his own people
in Quebec but, as 1 learned in subse
quent days in Ottawa and Tor onto, by Cana
da's English-speaking Catholics as well.
The 61-year-old prelate in his 19 years
as archbishop of Quebec has established
himself as a straightforward and down-
to-earth man who reads intelligently the
signs of the times. He is responsible
in no small measure for the current
projection of Quebec into the mainstream
of Canadian life. Only last month he de
clared forthrightly that in today's plural
istic society, the Catholic Church’s tra
ditional monopoly of education in Quebec
is no longer justifiable.
The membership of Cardinal Roy's
committee, has however, been greeted with
considerably more reserve. His two vice-
presidents are long-time members of the
Roman Curia. I cannot recall or discover
that Archbishop Alberto Castelli made any
concrete contribution to the conciliar de
bates. Bishop Achille Glorieux figured
briefly, if not gloriously, in the headlines
last November, when as secretary of a
subcommittee he failed to submit for its
consideration 200 amendments made by
Council Fathers to a text it was revising.
The members of the committee are
rather more difficult to evaluate. All four
are lay people, and I guess we should
call that a breakthrough. They are also
very worthy people, known for theiryears
of service to the Church. Vittorio Veronese
was long prominent in Italian Catholic
Action and later head of the lay apostolate
movement. Then, after a brief period as
head of Unesco, he returned to what some
might still describe as service of the Va
tican as a director of the Bank of Rome.
Rosemary Goldie, an Australian, is
Veronese's successor in the lay aposto
late. Auguste Vanistendaele, a Belgian, is
secretary general of the International Fe
deration of Christian Trades Unions. The
name of Johannes Schaul (a German) is
new to me, but I understand that he is an
official of Caritas or Miseror and thus
engaged in the impressive work for the
world’s poor conducted by the German
bishops.
A Catholic editor 25 years my junior
dismissed the whole group contemptuously
as membersof the "the old guard," when I
asked him what he thought of them. I can-
not “agree that we who bore the heat and •
burdeh'of the longpre-conciliardayshould
not be entitled to our equal share of the
rewards. I do, however, accept his under
lying premise, namely, that a group aged
50-pliis and imbued with the preconciliar
institutional attitudes, is not representa
tive of today’s Church.
What disturbs me still more deeply is
the total absence of representation, cleri
cal or lay, of the Third World. The Coun
cil, in its decree on the Church’s mis
sionary activity, has just proclaimed the
end of religious imperialism and the ur
gent need to incarnate the Church in every
culture. How then can we justify the export
to Asia, Africa and Latin America of
forms and concepts of the lay apostolate
based exclusively on European thought and
experience? And can we promote justice
for the world's poor while keeping them
in their traditional place on the outside?
Finally, am I simply a dreamer, if I
think that a committee which seeks to en
list the cooperation of other Christians
in the search for peace should include
at least one representative of those we
want to engage in dialogue?
Daughter of Modesty Blaise Meets the Son
of Goldfinger”) or perhaps even a con
frontation of principals ("Modesty Blaise
and 007 vs. Hercules, Our Man Flint and
Godzilla").
Let there be no doubt that Modesty is
a female Bond, and not simply the
action-type heroine who has been with
us from "Sheena, Queen of the Jungle”
through TV’s "Honey West,” Emma Peel
("The Avengers”) and the forthcoming
"Girl from U.N.C.L.E.” (Of all these,
only Mrs. Peel, acted by velvety Diana
Rigg, deservs mention in polite conver
sation). Modesty is an amoral gadget-
user and killer, indistinguishable morally
from the villains she fights, and ear
nestly promiscuous (as the title song puts
it, "perfect mistress of her art and a
perfect mistress, too”).
Since the character camefrom a British
comic strip, the Blaise film is much broa
der in its satire than the Bond epics,
and thus less likely to be mistakenly ac
cepted to face value. The sex scenes are
clearly laughable (as in ‘Tom Jones,”
it is possible to be dffended by them but
not seduced by them), but it is a decadent
kind of humor.
Further, the jokes are so sophisticated
and the violence treated in such high
black comic but unspectacular style that
the film will probably not be much ad
mired by U.S. teen-agers. The Bond spirit
is there but the flashipess is missing.
Yfius there is no real concern die movie
will bring the downfall of either civiliza
tion or the high school football team in
Long Branch, N.J.
The heroine herself is played by Italy’s
Monica Vitti, an earthy sex-symbol type
whose inability to handle English dialog
adds greatly to the comic confusion. Be
tween Miss Vitti's broken English and the
various dialects mumbled by the Britons
in the cast, it takes a full 30 minutes
to get even a vague inkling of what’s
happening. That vague inkling is the most
you get.
Perhaps because of her good-natured
incompetence, Miss Vitti manages to make
her heroine likeable if not completely ad
mirable. There is the Italian warmth that
can never quite degenerate into Bondian
computerism, and the undeniable femi
ninity which seems to say let's forget
all this claptrap and get to the love and
pasta, baby. In general, though, I opt
for the old-fashioned girls who couldn’t
beat a sailor in a knife fight and didn’t
have tattoos on their thighs.
MOSAIC
Tempest Over A Christmas Stamp
By Leon Paul
Here it is the middle of summer, and
Christmas is the center of a minor tem
pest. Rabbi Arthur J. Lelyveld, president
of the American Jewish Congress, pro
tested the issuance of a 1966 Christmas
stamp which reproduces a portion of a
Hans Memling painting showing the
Madonna and Child.
"With abiding respect for the sensibi
lities of our Christian fellow-American,”
Rabbi Lelyveld
wrote to the Post
master General,
"and for the esthe
tic importance of
the subject, we
must nevertheless
urge you not to print
this stamp. The
celebration of re
ligious holidays, we
believe, should be left to the church, the
synagogue and the individual conscience.
It is not the business of the United States
Post Office.”
A stamp such as this, the rabbi be
lieves, is a classic example of the way
in which violations of the principle of the
separation of church and state "creep
into practice and gain acceptance.” The
fact that the design is a reproduction of
a work of art (the original painting hangs
in the National Gallery in Washington)
is "irrelevant” according to the rabbi.
The Postmaster General’s office reject
ed the rabbi's protest. And rightly so.
Although the celebration of religious holi
days should certainly be left to the church,
the synagogue and the individual con
science, it IS the business of the U.S,
Post Office to issue appropriate stamps
commemorating anything it deems impor
tant enough to record the American scene.
I have bought some beautiful commemo
rative stamps about all sorts of events
and people and things. There is one you
may still be able to get showing the face
of a clown with the word CIRCUS at the
top. Is the U.S. Post Office in the en
tertainment business then? I recall one
commemorating the Salvation Army. Was
this advocating anything? Unfortunately, we
have not had the pleasure and the privi
lege of seeing more religious stamps in
this country as they have in most Euro
pean countries. And some very beautiful
ones at that.
Isreal has put out some very beautiful
religious stamps commemorating every
aspect of Jewish life and history. In August
Israel will issue a set of five festival
stamps picturing Jewish ritual art ob
jects. I'm not a stamp collector or I
would surely see that those would be added
to my collect! on I
Separation of church and state can be
carried too far— far enough for it have
the taste of atheism and the flavor of
agnosticism. We are surely not THAT
kind of a country!
Let's urge the Postmaster General not
to stop with the 1966 Christmas stamp,
but to commemorate the religious life of
the American people in a series of stamps,
Jewish, Christian and other religious mo
tifs.
"No one is forced to use the Christmas
stamp," the Post Office told Rabbi
Lelyveld, noting that other issues are
available.
I think it would do Rabbi Lelyveld
some good, and anyone else who feels
the way he does, to read the July issue
of Commentary, an excellent Jewish
magazine published by the American
Jewish Committee. In an article entitled:
"Church and State: How High a Wall?”
Milton Himmelfarb makes some remarka
bly interesting observations.
"It is not true that freedom is most
secure where Church and State are se
parated,” says Himmelfarb. "Separation
and separationism are not the same; even
in America, separationism is potential
ly tyrannical; separationism needlessly
repels some from the democratic con
sensus; it is harsh to those who prefer
non-public schools for conscience’ sake;
and it stands in the way of a more im
portant good (and a more important safe
guard of Jeiwsh security), the best pos
sible education for all.”
Maintaining that Jews are probably more
devoted than anyone else to the separa
tion of Church and State (in America),
Mr. Himmelfarb says that "hearing some
of us talk about separation or reading
the statements of our organizations, one
has the impression that we think our
selves more loyal to the Constitution and
more skilled in its interpretation. We
are not,”, he says, "we are only more
separation! st.”
And I think this point should be stress
ed: that the American Jewish Congress,
and Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld, do not speak
for all the Jewish people in the U.S.
Perhaps not even for a majority of them.
The N.Y. Times headlines this article
" ‘ Religious’ Stamp Assailed By Jews’*
This is utterly misleading!
There will be many thousands and thou
sands of Jews who will welcome the
Christmas stamp as a work of art, and
as a tribute to the religious life of the
Christians of our country. And many
Jews will use this Christmas stamp on
their mail. And some of them may even
use it to send Hanukkah cards to their
Christian friends!
Paul
The Dreary Librals
By Garry Wills
Women are popularly supposed to edge
around the corner of their thirtieth year
with some misgivings. Perhaps only they
will be able to pity the acute discomfort
about to descend on veterans of a cru
sade like the "Dirty Speech" movement
at Berkeley. The crusaders' motto, as
you may recall, was "Trust no one over
thirty." Picture, then, their inner divi
sion when the calendar tells them it is
time to start hiding what their palsied
left, hand is up to, lest the equally sus
picious (and shaky) right hand find out.
How long can the two be kept from lock
ing in a feckless struggle to the death?
There is something very fitting about
that slogan. It sums up much of the worst
aspect of America, especially "the
America of the Kennedys.” The Kennedys
are used, by their
cultists, as a mir
ror on the wall to
prove we are fai
rest of them all
(though the Kennedy
who really wrought
it all is decently ob
scured since he is
not young). The na
tion aptly dreams of
the President who dreamed of "007”
the President whose, major impact on our
culture is the Ian Fleming boom. By
dreaming of Jack Kennedy dreaming of
James Bond, Norman Mailer produced
Stephen Rojack, and that (God help us)
really is the American dream.
It is not true that we are a "young
nation," though we have managed, unfor
tunately, to be in some ways younger than
we were. The rebellious phrase-makers
of the 1770s used ringing words to de
scribe respectability — "a decent respect
to the opinions of mankind.” Father Murray
has commented on the dry legal quality
of the American revolution’s slogans. We
demanded representation— based on taxa
tion. Washington was called the father of
his country, not to draw attention to any
diapered lack of control on the part of the
colonies, but to the mature wisdom of their
leader. We did not ' ave Founding Babies,
but Founding Fathers. Like all wise men,
the institutors of this nation tended not
to trust anyone under I thirty 1 .
There is something senile in the babb
ling about America as a "young nation.”
It reflects an historical anthropomorphism
that would evade the burden of freedom.
If we are young — the fallacious image
suggests — we are bound to grow. If
old, bound to die. Then let us, by all
means, convince ourselves we are young.
But a nation is not a kidney.
every line of thought with a presumption
that one's elders — tradition, men in the
large, the race — know more than one
self. This presumption can, of course, be
occasionally wrong. And failure to test the
presumptionist that, so often, keeps the
conservative temperament from being ful
filled by conservative principles. The con
servative is tempted to think he and his
contemporaries can add nothing to the tra
dition. The temptation becomes failure if
one declines into a passive resignation and
regret. The liberal on the other hand is
tempted toward a perpetual adolescence,
all wretched thrashings and self-im
portance. Of the two, the former seems
to me, sad as it is, more dignified for
the one who fails and less harmful to his
neighbors.
Does conservatism make one too sub
missive, then, to the powers that be?
Not properly understood. One of the things
our elders, our ancestors from the time
of Herodotus, have been most insistent in
teaching us is that power corrupts. By
the measuring rod of the ages, one’s
immediate elders are not ancient. (In
Sophocles' Antigone, Haemon rightly re
bukes his own father for being too young).
A man who is learning from Plato and
Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Kant and
Hegel, Shakespeare and Dante, Homer and
Aeschylus is not likely to hang servilely
on every word his boss has to say. The
way not to be cowed by authorities is to
have a deep regard for Authority. One’s
ruler — mayor, governor, president pas
tor, bishops, pope — is not the voice
of the ages; more often than not he is
simply another voice of this age.
The great typical conservatives —
Cicero, Burke, Samuel Johnson, John Ran
dolph — were, in their most typical role,
opposition leaders. They were not moti
vated by the desL e to keep the moment's
petty ruler on his perch. The "powers
that be” are never the ancient truths (al
ways reeling, never fallen) but the current
fads — an endless succession of them,
each for its brief moment hypnotically
attractive. And to these powers it is the
liberal who is submissive, assuring us one
must ride "the wave of the future,” not
trying to "turn back the clock." One has
no choice; it is "what is happening.”
Give in; go along. So submissive are li
berals to power that they mourned over
the unimaginative presidency of Eisen
hower, fizzed in the exciting days of Ken
nedy, and relapsed into disappointed lan-
quor at Johnson's "consensus.” What
little worlds they live in, that can be made
interesting or dull by the mere fact that
"Jack or "Ike” is the current tenant
of the White House. They are at the mercy
of each tick, each tock of that giant
Clock they are not allowed to turn back.
Youth and age are not simply matter
of time. We are sometimes told that,
with man, youth is a state of mind. More
often it is a state of mindlessness. One
does not have to be over thirty in order
to distrust those under thirty. In fact,
distrusting youth should be the one ob
vious attitude of youth. We all suspect,
from the outset, that the old are no great
shakes. But we know the young are not.
We have all been there.
If I were to separate the conservative
instinct from the liberal, I could use no
easier test than this. The conservative
(no matter what his age) tends to begin
When I am told that most conservatives
are dreary, I have to agree. So are most
liberals; so are most men. We all, in vary
ing degrees, betray our vision. But the
conservative vision is not dreary. It of
fers us what even Socrates thought the
supreme promise of an afterlife — a
conversation with Homer. The trouble
with liberals is that even their vision is
dreary — imprisonment in clockwork
machinery with which one is not to tam
per; riding the wave. Man was born to
fight waves (it is called sailing). Apd to
rise above the tick-tock instant (it is call
ed thinking).
As I have viewed this, it is a word used
by Pope John XXIII to explain something
there in Rome where the thing is vernacu
lar. Then some of the wise guys over
here jumped on it and have been booting
it around ever since. We have been told
in no uncertain term? that all things in
the Church are to go into the vernacu
lar. This "aggiomams ato" is not ver
nacular over here. Then why use it? Why
not use the American or English word for
it?
A. It is probably because of our love
for Pope John and for the inspiration he
gave the world by using this word that
we have adopted it. These are days when
word-borrowing is popular. The French,
Germans and Italians use English words
and American slang in abundance. I un
derstand even the Russians are using
American expressions.
Q. Why do priests and nuns teach secu
lar subjects to such an extent that they
don't have any time or energy left for
the important subject of religion in CCD
classes?
Why is the teaching of CCD left mostly
to housewives? Wouldn't a priest or a nun
do a much better, more interesting and
more impressive job of teaching relig
ion to public school
children?
I say: Let the
priests and nuns do
first things first:
spread the Gospel
as our Lord com
manded, and then,
and only then, can
they use their time
to teach geography Msgr# Conway
or mathematics.
A. You seem to have answered your own
questions. My answer to your first ques
tion would be: 1 don’t know. (My postu
lates are too complicated and inexpert,to
be discussed here). My answer to your
second question is: Maybe.
Q. I recently read your comment about
that irritating, unpronounceable over -
used word "aggiornamento.” We have
talked and asked others the meaning of
this word with the same negative reply.
Wouldn't you think that some of you
people that have been kicking this thing
around in order to show your linguistical
ability would break down for a moment
and give us the phonetic spelling. But no,
you just go on waving it around.
As I explained earlier I cannot think of
an American word which expresses the
nuances of meaning Pope John had in
mind. "Up-date,’’ "bring up to date,”
was his idea. But those are awkward
expressions. "Modernize” won’t do be
cause of some of its implications. I
have gone through my dictionary and
Roget’s Thesaurus without finding the
right word. So until someone gives me a
better word I shall go on borrowing from
the Italian.
My Italian-English dictionary gives this
phonetic spelling of the word: adjorna-
mento, with accent on the penultimate syl
lable. This is close; an American has
a bit of difficulty with those tw* g’s.
But the sound of the second one is very
soft. The general rule in Italian:pronounce
every letter just as it is written.